My cycling month in review: July 2014

As I like to do at the beginning of each month, today I’m going to review some of my cycling highlights, personal records and totals from the previous month. July may have been very hot and humid, but I turned the cranks harder, faster and further than ever before, setting numerous personal records in the process. It was a good month.

Before I dive into the data, I’d like to introduce a new feature of my monthly cycling reports: Cycling Photo of the Month. I take a fair amount of photos on my cycling adventures, and so each month I’m going to select my personal favorite photograph and include it with this report. All data and no play makes John a dull boy. 🙂 If you’re interested, the photos I take on my rides (unless otherwise noted) are shot with my humble camera phone (currently the Samsung Galaxy S4).

Here’s this month’s photo, which I took on yesterday morning’s ride (click to enlarge):

From yesterday’s ride. Finishing up a good month of cycling with an easy spin on a beautiful morning!

New Cycling Personal Records: Monthly and Weekly Totals for Distance/Elevation/Time

New personal records were set in July for all of the monthly categories, breaking the three personal records I set in June. I also set a new single-week elevation PR in July, but that won’t last long since I’m planning to climb more than 10,000 feet in a single ride as part of my Six Gap training.

Other Cycling Personal Records & Achievements

Over the past month I set a total of 54 cycling personal records for time on various Strava segments (16 of those efforts resulted in new KOMs).

For Strava’s July 2014 Monthly Training Series (MTS): I finished in the top 1.26% of Strava MTS cyclists worldwide, placing 1,679th out of a total of 132,790 athletes with a total of 1,838.03 kilometers ridden from July 1st – July 31st.

My Training Calender: July 2014

My July 2014 Training Calender

VeloViewer Score

I’ve been using the awesome Strava companion site VeloViewer for quite some time now (in fact, that’s where some of the stats and charts in these monthly reports are obtained). If you’re a Strava cyclist who craves even more ways to crunch your ride data, then you owe it to yourself to check out Veloviewer. There’s a lot there, so explore and have some fun.

One of the features of VeloViewer that I really like is its innovative and unique VeloViewer Score.

The VeloViewer Score is a cool way for Strava users to compare themselves against other cyclists: It is the average segment position score from a cyclist’s top 25% (up to a maximum of 100) non-downhill segments. What I like about the VeloViewer Score is that it’s derived based on an algorithm that actually weights the number of other athletes who have also ridden the segments. In other words, VeloViewer understands and takes into account that a KOM with only 20 cyclists on the leaderboard is nowhere near as impressive as a KOM with 1,000 cyclists on the leaderboard.

Because of the way the VeloViewer Score is computed, it’s a unique method for cyclists who live far apart and never ride the same segments to compare their overall performances.

So, new starting this month I’ll be including my current VeloViewer Score with these reports (image below). Go create your own VeloViewer account and see where you stand–you know you want to. 🙂

My VeloViewer Score as of July 31, 2014.

2014 Goals Progress

In late 2013 I publicly announced a couple of cycling distance and elevation goals for 2014. Those goals were to ride at least 10,000 kilometers (6,214 miles) with more than 160,000 feet of elevation. Earlier this year I added the additional goal of riding my bike every single day in 2014. We’re now 58.08% of the way through 2014, so let’s see how I’m doing:

When I established these distance and elevation goals in late 2013, they were considerably higher than anything I’d ever done before. Because I’ve reached both of those goals so quickly, I have significantly revised them. I am now shooting for 20,000 kilometers (12,427 miles) with 360,000 feet of elevation.

I am currently 57% of the way to my revised distance goal of 20,000 kilometers, and I am 57.3% of the way to my revised elevation goal of 360,000 feet.

My 2014 riding streak continues, and I have ridden my bike every single day for 213 days straight (at least one ride every day from December 31, 2013 forward).

I’ve spent a total of 377 hours in the saddle so far in 2014.

Here are comparisons of my distance and elevation for 2012, 2013 and 2014 YTD (click to enlarge):

Distance comparison: 2012, 2013 and 2014 YTD

Elevation comparison: 2012, 2013 and 2014 YTD

Power Output Personal Records

Here’s a look at my current power curve (click to enlarge), followed by a chart with my actual power output personal records at various time intervals.

My power curve as of July 2014

I set a total of 12 new power output personal records in July. While increasing my power, I also dropped from 75.3 kg (166 pounds) to 73.57 kg (162.2 pounds), further increasing my power-to-weight ratio.

Here’s my complete power output chart (my current power chart can always be found in the “Cycling” section on the main menu, above):

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